A shared services agreement is a cost-effective strategy that allows multiple school districts to pool resources and share the costs of specialized personnel (e.g., occupational therapists, psychologists) and services for students with low-incidence disabilities. This collaboration creates economies of scale, enabling districts to provide federally mandated services more efficiently without reducing their overall financial commitment. This approach directly addresses rising costs while complying with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirement, which mandates that a district must spend at least the same amount of local/state funds on special education as it did in the previous year.

A. Shifting costs to parents as fees violates the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) mandate under federal law, which requires services to be provided at public expense.

B. Decreasing the budget allocation for special education is a direct violation of the federal Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirement under the IDEA.

D. Outsourcing to private contractors is not guaranteed to be cost-effective and can often be more expensive than public inter-district agreements for the same services.

1. U.S. Department of Education. (2020). Fiscal Requirements of Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Section: "Maintenance of Effort (MOE)," pp. 12-13. This document explicitly states that a Local Education Agency (LEA) "may not reduce the level of expenditures for the education of children with disabilities made by the LEA from local funds below the level of those expenditures for the preceding fiscal year," directly refuting option B.

2. Education Commission of the States. (2016, August). Shared Services in Education. This policy brief details how shared service agreements are used by school districts to "reduce costs and increase efficiencies" (p. 1), specifically mentioning special education as a prime area for such collaboration. This directly supports option C as a viable, cost-effective solution.

3. Yell, M. L. (2019). The Law and Special Education (5th ed.). Pearson. Chapter 4, "A Free Appropriate Public Education," clarifies that FAPE requires special education and related services to be provided "at public expense, under public supervision and direction, and without charge" (p. 105), which makes option A illegal.

4. Odden, A. R., & Picus, L. O. (2014). School Finance: A Policy Perspective (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Chapter 10 discusses strategies for improving school productivity, including the regionalization of services for special-needs students as a method to achieve economies of scale and control rising costs, aligning with the logic of option C.